WORLDS AT WAR

The world inside video games is a fascinating place

where you can fight mythical beasts at… The world inside video games is a fascinating place

where you can fight mythical beasts at every turn,

travel out of the universe or simply shoot fire balls

out of your hands.

What might surprise some is that the world surrounding

video games — sometimes referred to as

‘reality’ — can be just as interesting. And there are

plenty of different reasons for those two worlds

to intersect and, eventually, reseparate.

Senior Alex Penn’s love for video games

started even before he was in kindergarten,

after his mother took a computer course and

showed him a few programs. One of those

programs was BASICA, which he used to

create his own games such as chess. But

the fi rst game Penn said he remembered

getting into was ‘Wolfenstein 3D,’ a PC

game in which an American soldier had

to escape from a Nazi castle.

‘Say what you want about violent

video games, but I’ve turned out

OK,’ said Penn.

And while the games have gotten

a bit more detailed and graphic

than simply seeing a gun at the

bottom of your screen fi ring

apparently invisible bullets at

Nazis like in ‘Wolfenstein,’

Penn still said he most frequently

plays these fi rstperson

shooter games,

but he’s not too picky

when it comes to game

genre.

‘I’ll play just about

anything,’ he said. ‘If

it’s fun, it’s fun.’

He wouldn’t

guess his weekly

gaming total,

instead saying

he plays

‘probably too

much.’

Penn, a

mechanical

engineering

major,

said he plays some sort of game every day. But that’s

not just restricted to computer or video games. He’s also

president of Pitt’s Gaming Club, which focuses solely

on things like card and board games.

While to some it may seem excessive to play games

every day, Penn says he’s not addicted to them, nor do

they interfere with other aspects of his life.

‘Work always comes fi rst,’ said Penn. ‘It’s what I

do with my free time, and whenever I have free time

I’m usually gaming.’

According to Saul Shiffman, a psychology professor at

Pitt who focuses his studies on addictive behavior, Penn’s

actions would not be considered addictive. But it’s not

uncommon to see people whose behaviors would be.

‘A key is when the addictive behavior takes over life,

seemingly becoming more important than other activities,’

said Shiffman. ‘If it doesn’t affect their schoolwork,

social life or other domains of functioning, they may

not be addicted.’

Although some might not believe it, Penn said gaming

can do quite the opposite of taking away from one’s social

life. Penn met his girlfriend freshman year at an Honors

College gaming night, and the two have been dating for

four years. He’s also in the Pitt Japanese Animation Club,

which holds gaming nights on Tuesday.

At a recent meeting, about 10 people met in the Cathedral

to play ‘Left 4 Dead,’ an Xbox 360 game in which

players do their best to kill off seemingly never-ending

hordes of zombies. While Penn didn’t play — he said he’s

not one for ‘jumpy’ games — he watched, occasionally

giving those playing advice on where to go or from which

direction even more zombies were running.

But meetings like those are what Penn said so many

enjoy most about gaming: the socializing. He said pretty

much all of his friends are gamers in some capacity, and

he doesn’t see why non-gamers have a stereotypical view

of gamers as anti-social basement dwellers.

‘There seems to be some lost culture between [gamers

and non-gamers],’ he said. ‘A lot of people like to look

down on gamers for what we like to do. Honestly, it’s

no more absurd than when you say you enjoy watching

ESPN. That’s foreign to me. I don’t understand why you

would want to watch someone having fun when you can

be doing something fun yourself.’

There are plenty of different reasons one starts playing

games, whether it’s out of boredom, living out a

more intense version of the ‘Thriller’ video or simply

practicing for any upcoming zombie attacks. But there

might also be some more practical uses for video games,

not to say planning out your method of survival for the

impending zombie takeover isn’t useful.

Lauren Collister, a fi rst-year doctoral candidate in

the linguistics department, incorporated gaming into

her work.

‘I studied language use in ‘World of Warcraft,’ specifi –

cally looking at how people organized their conversation

in text and how they used language to form and show

relationships,’ said Collister. ‘In spoken language, we

have visual and auditory cues to let us know

when someone is done speaking, how to

interpret what they say. I looked at how

these things transferred over to the virtual

world, where all there is is text on

a screen.’

Collister said she was a gamer before

starting her research but focused mostly

on console games opposed to PC games, like

‘World of Warcraft,’ a massively multiplayer online

role-playing game, or MMORPG. She said she

still plays the game, ‘World of Warcraft,’

which hit 11.5 million subscribers in December

and allows players to team up

to slay monsters and explore a large

gaming world.

While doing her research,

Collister estimated that she

played the game about

10 to 15 hours a week.

Sounds a bit more exciting

than spending that

time reading for class,

no?

Ten hours a week of

gaming might sound

like a bit much, but

for serious gamers

that might be an

off week. John

Fabry used to

be one of

those gamers.

The

senior

i n –

formation sciences major said he started playing games

in elementary school but got into gaming seriously for

about a two-year window during his senior year of high

school and freshman year at Pitt, when he would play

approximately 15 to 20 hours of games a week.

Fabry also said he started going to tournaments,

and when those neared, he played closer to 25

hours of games a week.

While doing this, Fabry said he made sure to

keep up with his work, which he didn’t have a

problem doing. The area he said suffered the

most from fi tting gaming into his schedule

was getting a good night’s sleep.

Eventually, Fabry said, this burned him

out. He then stopped gaming alone.

While Fabry wouldn’t say if he thought

he was addicted to gaming, his method of

quitting was a pretty standard one.

‘There are multiple ways to quit,’

said Shiffman. ‘Most involve either a

formal or self-directed program of

behavior change, with aspects like

staying away from settings that promote

the behavior.’

Conversely, Penn doesn’t see

himself quitting anytime soon.

Or at all.

‘It’s a generational thing,’

he said. ‘The group that grew

up when Nintendo was new is

getting older, but they’re not

going to stop. You’re going

to get generations of older

gamers.’

And while he has no

plans on giving it up,

Penn said if need be,

‘I could live without

it, but I wouldn’t want

to. I wouldn’t call it

an addiction as in a

psychological need,

but there is a great

desire and enjoyment

I get out

of it.

‘A psychological

need is

Diet Mountain

Dew,’

he said.